First through the Grand Canyon

by John Wesley Powell

Taking with me a white man and an Indian, I start on a climb to the summit of the Pouns-a′-gunt Plateau, which rises above us on the east. Our way, for a mile or more, is over a great peat bog, that trembles under our feet, and now and then a mule sinks through the broken turf, and we are compelled to pull it out with ropes.

Passing the bog, our way is up a gulch, at the foot of the Pink Cliffs, which form the escarpment, or wall, of the great plateau. Soon we leave the gulch, and climb a long ridge, which winds around to the right toward the summit of the great table.

Two hours’ riding, climbing, and clambering brings us near the top. We look below, and see clouds drifting up from the south, and rolling tumultuously toward the foot of the cliffs, beneath us. Soon, all the country below is covered with a sea of vapor—a billowy, raging, noiseless sea—and as the vapory flood still rolls up from the south, great waves dash against the foot of the cliffs and roll back; another tide comes in, is hurled back, and another and another, lashing the cliffs until the fog rises to the summit, and covers us all.

There is a heavy pine and fir forest above, beset with dead and fallen timber, and we make our way through the undergrowth to the east.

It rains! The clouds discharge their moisture in torrents, and we make for ourselves shelters of boughs, which are soon abandoned, and we stand shivering by a great fire of pine logs and boughs, which we have kindled, but which the pelting storm half extinguishes.

One, two, three, four hours of the storm, and at last it partially abates.

During this time our animals, which we have turned loose, have sought for themselves shelter under the trees, and two of them have wandered away beyond our sight. I go out to follow their tracks, and come near to the brink of a ledge of rocks, which, in the fog and mist, I suppose to be a little ridge, and I look for a way by which I can go down. Standing just here, there is a rift made in the fog below, by some current or blast of wind, which reveals an almost bottomless abyss. I look from the brink of a great precipice of more than two thousand feet; but, through the mist, the forms below are half obscured, and all reckoning of distance is lost, and it seems ten thousand feet, ten miles—any distance the imagination desires to make it.

Catching our animals, we return to the camp. We find that the little streams which come down from the plateau are greatly swollen, but at camp they have had no rain. The clouds which drifted up from the south, striking against the plateau, were lifted up into colder regions, and discharged their moisture on the summit, and against the sides of the plateau, but there was no rain in the valley below.

September 9.—We make a fair start this morning, from the beautiful meadow at the head of the Kanab, and cross the line of little hills at the headwaters of the Rio Virgen, and pass, to the south, a pretty valley, and at ten o’clock come to the brink of a great geographic bench—a line of cliffs. Behind us are cool springs, green meadows, and forest clad slopes; below us, stretching to the south, until the world is lost in blue haze, is a painted desert; not a desert plain, but a desert of rocks, cut by deep gorges, and relieved by towering cliffs and pinnacled rocks—naked rocks, brilliant in the sunlight.

By a difficult trail, we make our way down the basaltic ledge, through which innumerable streams here gather into a little river, running in a deep cañon. The river runs close to the foot of the cliffs, on the right hand side, and the trail passes along to the right. At noon we rest, and our animals feed on luxuriant grass.